Pop Stop

By Ho Yi / STAFF REPORTER

Taiwan's film industry is in mourning this week for Edward Yang (楊德昌), a leading figure of Taiwan New Wave cinema who died of colon cancer at the age of 59 last Friday. Completing only eight films in his 18-year-long career, Yang became the country's first filmmaker to win the Cannes best director award in 2000 for Yi Yi (一一), his last work, which has yet to be commercially released in his homeland. The withdrawal of this film for local release was said to be a proud gesture of protest from the idiosyncratic director to express his grave disappointment with the local film environment as a whole.

The doyen of the Taiwan New Wave, Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), mourned Yang's passing as an end of an era and said that his old friend had never let on about his illness. Director turned glass art entrepreneur Chang Yi (張毅) remarked that his old comrade's passion for film was such that when he visited Yang 10 days before his death in Beverly Hills, the terminally ill director was still working feverishly on an animation project titled Little Kid (小朋友).

During the last years of his life, Yang had put much time and effort into the ambitious feature-length animation film project The Wind (追風) in collaboration with Jackie Chan (成龍). Costing over NT$200 million for a ten-minute long passage, the project was eventually aborted and what is said to be Yang's animation dream since junior high school remains an unfinished vision.

In local celebrity news, the wedding of Super Basketball League team Dacin Tiger's (達欣) coach Liu Jia-fa (劉嘉發) and Chien I-chun (錢依淳) from Eelin (伊林) modeling agency held last Saturday saw a night of celebration which brought together the city's most beautiful people, as long-legged models and young, virile athletes strutted on the red carpet led by man-magnet Yvonne Yao (姚采穎) and teenybopper idol Tien Lei (田壘).

Though the coach instructed his players not to flirt with the belles and ask for their phone numbers in order to "protect the players' non-model girlfriends," the hormone-charged party nevertheless saw intoxicated singles pairing up and getting cozy with each other. According to eyewitnesses, the tension on the outfield was said to be extremely high as the beautiful crowd's significant others all stayed alert to every sound and movement to keep possible competitors at bay.

While her fellow models celebrated the union between man and woman, Janel Tsai (蔡淑臻) was spotted cruising last Saturday with her lesbian roommate known as Nico. Though insisting that she likes men, she didn't deny press speculation on her feelings for the tomboy in question.

"Nico is my life and I will be lost without her," Tsai was quoted as saying. A profession of lesbian love, a dating game to fill in the single period, or a crafty tactic to make it to the gossip headlines? Stay tuned for more updates.

It has been a while since Taiwan's IT tycoon Terry Gou (郭台銘) made his pursuit for a future partner a source of public entertainment. Yet, according to gossip insiders, the big boss will strike again and employ his charm and money to woo Hong Kong actress Rosamund Kwan (關之琳). The two are said to have scheduled a date in Beijing over Christmas.

A glimpse into the life of a super rich entrepreneur: Does being a super rich tycoon mean you have to set up dates five months in advance, or is Kwan playing hard to get?